Biography of space pioneer Sally Ride soars

Lynn Sherr peels back layers of secrecy

As the first American woman in space, Sally Ride was famous. She didn’t like it much.

She welcomed the career opportunities fame brought her, and she understood the responsibility she carried as a role model, especially to young girls who might be interested in science. But there were limits to what she offered up for hero worship via the media.

Only after she died in La Jolla in 2012 at age 61 did the world learn she had cancer. And that she was gay.

What that secrecy says about her, and what it says about the larger society she helped change, is among the fascinating themes explored in this nuanced and ultimately celebratory biography by Lynn Sherr, a former network television correspondent.

“That she could not, or would not, openly identify herself as a gay woman reflects not only her intense need for privacy,” Sherr writes, “but the shame and fear that an intolerant society can inflict even on its heroes. And the consequences of that secrecy on many of those close to her.”

Sherr was among Ride’s friends, and even she didn’t know the secrets. They met in 1981, when Sherr was covering NASA for ABC News and Ride was part of a pioneering group of female and minority astronauts cracking the “celestial glass ceiling” at the space agency. They bonded over a shared interest in the history of the women’s movement and a shared contempt for what Sherr calls “the overblown egos and conservative intransigence of both our professions.”

After Ride died, Tam O’Shaughnessy, her partner, decided it was time for a biography to be written. She cooperated with Sherr, as did Ride’s mother and sister, sharing stories and insight to add substance and context to someone who, to the larger public anyway, had been more icon than human being.

Sherr mines that access to uncover nuggets of information (Ride disliked the song “Mustang Sally,” played by radio stations everywhere as she rocketed into space) and to tap deeper veins of meaning. She’s especially good at explaining how Ride’s childhood contributed to a belief that reaching anything was possible, even the stars.

An early passion was tennis, then physics. Ride was a graduate student at Stanford in January 1977 when she saw an item in the college newspaper about NASA looking for women to join the space shuttle program.

“Before applying to NASA, she had never considered flying in space,” Sherr writes. “Now, it was all she wanted to do.”

Sherr’s revealing history of the behind-the-scenes thinking and maneuvering about women in space makes it easy to understand just how earthshaking it was when the shuttle with Ride aboard lifted off on June 18, 1983. Among those watching the launch was Gloria Steinem, the noted feminist, who said, “Millions of little girls are going to sit by their television sets and see they can be astronauts, heroes, explorers and scientists.”

Being an inspiration to others was one part of her newfound celebrity that Ride embraced. She rejected most interview requests, even turned down an appearance on a Bob Hope show (she didn’t like the way the fabled entertainer treated women). Away from the public glare, she settled into a life as a physicist, working at UC San Diego, writing children’s books with O’Shaughnessy, and establishing Sally Ride Science, designed to inspire future generations of female scientists.